That Girl
by Kichigai Hi
Summary: An exotic beauty that somehow birthed from the skin of a fighter and a spy. Loyal, graceful, unstoppable. There were no doubts that Ziva was "that girl". Well, in no one except for herself.


So, this one is a bit different from my usual style I think (though still typically analytical) and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. There's a greater use of color and I wanted to see if it would make the impact any different - and each color was chosen for a reason, as you will see. I liked the concept though and hope you will too. :)

Oh, and there is some implied Tiva, but it doesn't have to be taken to the romantic level. Then again, that option is always open. :D

Finally, it's always nice to hear what I did wrong/right/weirdly, so review if you will!

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_Being unique isn't necessarily being yourself._

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It was inevitable.

From the moment her pale face had begun to be framed by short, dark curls, everyone knew she was going to be a beauty. The first time she was sent home from school - for attacking a boy who'd refused to leave her best friend alone - they could tell she was a force to be reckoned with. She wasn't perfect but she had wit, wasn't five-foot-ten and bulging with muscles but knew how to get her way, physically or otherwise. Hushed brown eyes stared at her from across a room, a hall, a street, knowing that Eli's oldest daughter was everything wanted of the child of a high-ranking Mossad official. One day, a girl would be born, destined to serve her country, protect it from a world that would gladly see it go. Destined to fight the best, survive the best, sense the best, _be _the best and devote her life to that.

It didn't take long for everyone to realize she was that girl.

To them, her dreams were different, one in a million like she, made of golden blood, fatigued green, dull black, desert blue. Oh, and she believed it. Her goals were paintings - painful, twisted Picasso - drawn with shining righteousness, weapons, and the knowledge that one day, she would make enough of a difference so that even if her country never even remembered her deeds, at least her father would.

And that was where that girl ended.

That girl was a prodigy. Loved. Respected. Feared. But for her, it was accidental; in trying to be loved, she'd ended up a prodigy. In trying to be respected, she'd ended up feared. In all eyes except the two that mattered most. That girl would never have to strive for a father's tender glance - no, that girl either already had it or didn't need it. And that girl was never insecure enough to close herself off just to gain respect - respect would be something that came as naturally as rays of lilac light in a growing day. Oh, she tried to tell herself on the outside that she was enough, that she was worth the effort - deep down, she knew it too... but there was too large a gap between gut feeling and desperate hope that she didn't know how to bridge just yet. By the time she found the courage to admit to someone - then to herself - that in reality her dreams - a million in one - consisted more of dusty white, bright brown, and deep, viscous sapphire, those dreams had become wishes of her imagination while the gold, drab green and black, pale blue had manifested themselves into her dreams of night along with a biting, glaring red pain. Those were the ones actually true.

The struggles never passed through her impenetrable surface. No one she encountered ever dared to even think she was weak. She was patriotic and service came before self; she convinced herself that these were the reasons certain lives were off-limits to her. But it was the fear of inadequacy that would never consider what it would be like to one day have a real lover. A husband. A family. Things like this were too normal - too girl-down-the-block - and they could wait. White-brown-blue was so easily eclipsed by red.

When finally opportunity had presented itself, the chance to show the world - her superior in more than profession - that she could fight better than best, survive better than best, be better than best, she took it. And a bit more golden blood in the process - blood too close to her own. But somehow, in trying to be not only _better_ and _more_ but _one_ and _only_, she found herself among people who showed her just how defenseless she was in places that lesser people - everyone else - were immune to. She caught the wistful gaze of desert blue but silver hair always managed to swallow it down like bourbon, with effort and rewarding burn. She envied the eyes of blissful ignorance that wouldn't recognize her macabre dreams of night if she painted them for him. She became addicted to a new, bright shining green that, despite his attempts at being _that guy_, dreamed of white and brown and warm and blue as well.

In a sweet, growing madness, she even considered confessing that her back bone was, in fact, not made of steel but of soiled pink leather; that the head held high each passing day could only bear to do so not because of an innate pride but because of the dance instructor who'd shaped the early years of her life. But that girl wouldn't need an excuse like this... and if she wasn't that girl, then who was she?

Things started to fall into place.

It was funny, she absently mused one blurred minute between the slap across her swollen cherry jaw and the punch in her stomach one sunny, heavy African day. How that girl, in being unique and independent and unstoppable became no more than what everyone else wanted her to be. And in that second, she finally sighed out the lies and intook the crystal truth, finally got the courage to accept that those girls were never products of their own selves anyway.

She would no longer be that girl.

Perhaps she'd once been meant to be the hero of many. Maybe, had she been raised in a universe a hair away, had she never experienced summer's labored rebirth, had she learned to reconcile the aspirations and the hauntings - white olive black red on a schizophrenic canvas - she would have never stayed in this nation that knew so little about her own. Maybe, she would have been the one to fight the war, to win the battle, to be the leader those hushed eyes had waited for her to become, instead of a partner, an alien, a hero known by only three or four. But with that one added green, she found the red faded that much more quickly. And she found she liked paintings with its soothing far more.

From the moment she lay curled up in her moonlight sheets, stroking the rich brunette head of hair that lay on her chest within sated midnight air, only two needed to know why she finally decided to embrace those dreams of yore.

And why that girl was plenty overrated.

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Ooh I gotta say I'm so excited about Flesh and Blood. And Jet Lag? It will not exist until 8:00 next Tuesday for the sake of my sanity. ;)


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